Many industries in the fields of biotechnology, fine chemicals, and pharmaceuticals are employing microfluidic processes for a variety of reasons including high speed operation, safety, and waste reduction. Specifically, there is an interest in the use of microsystems for continuous organic synthesis that has applications in the pharmaceutical, fine chemicals, and perfumery industry. Organic multi-step syntheses using microchannels promises to increase the speed of chemistry research and thus, impact drug discovery and catalyst screening.
Continuous reaction and separation schemes using bubble point separation techniques have been difficult to achieve at the microscale. In microsystems, surface forces are dominant. Therefore, boiling liquids to achieve vapor-liquid equilibrium presents a variety of challenges.
Accordingly, improved materials and methods are needed.